Little information exists about health-risk behaviors in Jordanian adolescents especially among 15 – 19 years olds. The purpose of this study was to assess the patterns of three of health-risk behaviors, namely, diet, physical activity, and tobacco use of the Jordanian adolescent students aged 15 to 19 years old, and to compare the patterns of these behaviors between male and female adolescents. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used. A multi-stage stratified random sample was obtained from the public school educational directorate, which is affiliated to Amman governorate. A random sub sample of eight public comprehensive secondary schools was selected, four schools for females and four schools for males. A total of 750 students (375 boys and 375 girls), their ages between 15 – 19 years were included in the analysis. Data were collected by using two tools: students’ profile structured questionnaire (tool 1), and a modified version of the General School Health Survey questionnaire (tool 2). The findings of this study showed that 10.7% of students were overweight and 4.9% were obese. The majority of students had eaten less than the daily requirements of fruits, vegetables, and milk daily, while the intake of soft drinks was higher than recommended. One-fifth of students had been physically active at least 60 minutes daily. Overall, (55.5%) had tried smoking and 44.0% had smoked any other form of tobacco such as water pipe. Moreover, 62.4% had tried to quit smoking cigarettes. Furthermore, there were significant differences between males and females regarding these risk behaviors. In conclusion, there are problems with Jordanian adolescents relating to diet, physical activity, and tobacco use. The results highlight the need for effective school health program that combines education, counseling and behavioral skill building along with environmental support to enhance students’ efforts, intentions, and strategies to overcome these risk behaviors. In addition, the findings could help policy makers to strength strategies and policies to maintain healthy adolescents and schools.

McNeely, C. and Blanchard, J. (2009) The Teen Years Explained: A Guide to Healthy Adolescent Development. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Adolescent Health, Baltimore.http://www.jhsph.edu/adolescenthealth

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2011) School Health Programs: Improving the Health of Our Nation’s Youth. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Adolescent and School Health, Atlanta.http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2010) The Association between School-Based Physical Activity, Including Physical Education, and Academic Performance. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Atlanta.

Vegetables and fruits are grown worldwide and play an important role in human diets because they provide vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, and phytochemicals. Vegetables and fruits are also associated with improvement of gastrointestinal health, good vision, and reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, chronic diseases such as diabetes, and some forms of cancer. Vegetable and fruit production suffers from many biotic stresses caused by pathogens, pests, and weeds and requires high amounts of plant protection products per hectare. United States vegetables farmers are benefiting from growing transgenic squash cultivars resistant to Zucchini yellow mosaic virus, Watermelon mosaic virus, and Cucumber mosaic virus, which were deregulated and commercialized since 1996. Bt-sweet corn has also proven effective for control of some lepidopteran species and continues to be accepted in the fresh market in the USA, and Bt-fresh-market sweet corn hybrids are released almost every year. Likewise, transgenic Bt-eggplant bred to reduce pesticide use is now grown by farmers in Bangladesh. Transgenic papaya cultivars carrying the coat-protein gene provide effective protection against Papaya ring spot virus elsewhere. The transgenic “Honey Sweet” plum cultivar provides an interesting germplasm source for Plum pox virus control. Enhanced host plant resistance to Xanthomonascampestris pv. musacearum, which causes the devastating banana Xanthomonas wilt in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, was achieved by plant genetic engineering. There are other vegetable and fruit crops in the pipeline that have been genetically modified to enhance their host plant resistance to insects and plant pathogens, to show herbicide tolerance, and to improve features such as slow ripening that extends the shelf-life of the produce. Consumers could benefit further from eating more nutritious transgenic vegetables and fruits. Transgenic plant breeding therefore provides genetically enhanced seed embedded technology that contributes to integrated pest management in horticulture by reducing pesticide sprays as well as improving food safety by minimizing pesticide residues. Furthermore, herbicide-tolerant transgenic crops can help reducing plough in fields, thereby saving fuel because of less tractor use, which also protects the structure of the soil by reducing its erosion. Transgenic vegetable and fruit crops could make important contributions to sustainable vegetable production and for more nutritious and healthy food. Countries vary, however, in their market standards of acceptance of transgenic crops. Biotechnology products will be successful if clear advantages and safety are demonstrated to both growers and consumers.

Kameswara-Rao, C. (2010) Moratorium on Bt Brinjal: A Review of the Order of the Minister of Environment and Forests, Government of India. Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education, Bangalore.

Diaz de la Garza, R.I., Quinlivan, E.P., Klaus, S.M.J., Basset, G.J.C., Gregory, J.F. and Hanson, A.D. (2004) Folate Biofortification in Tomatoes by Engineering the Pteridine Branch of Folate Synthesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101, 13720-13725. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0404208101

Diaz de la Garza, R.I., Gregory, J.F. and Hanson, A.D. (2007) Folate Biofortification of Tomato Fruit. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 4218-4222.http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0700409104

Morris, J., Hawthorne, K.M., Hotze, T., Abrams, S.A. and Hirschi, K.D. (2008) Nutritional Impact of Elevated Calcium Transport Activity in Carrots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 1431-1435. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0709005105

Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences (2000) Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture. National Academies Press, Washington DC.

Union of the German Academies of Science and Humanities (2006) Are There Health Hazards for the Consumers from Eating Genetically Modified Foods? Interacademy Panel Initiative on Genetically Modified Organisms, Berlin.http://www.ilsi.org/NorthAmerica/Documents/UGASH.pdf

The present comparative review discusses conservation of early evolutionary, relic genetics in the genome of man, which determine two different mechanistic reductive division systems expressed by normal, human diploid cells. The divisions were orderly and segregated genomes reductively to near-diploid daughter cells, which showed gain of a proliferative advantage (GPA) over cells of origin. This fact of GPA expression is a fundamental requirement for initiation of tumorigenesis. The division systems were responses to a carcinogen-free induction system, consisting of short (1 – 3 days) exposures of young cells to nutritional deprivation of amino acid glutamine (AAD). In recovery growth (2 – 4 days) endo-tetra/ochtoploid cells and normal diploid metaphase cells demonstrated chromosomal reductive divisions to respectively heterozygous and homozygous altered daughter cells. Both division systems showed co-segregating whole complements, which for reduction of the diploid metaphases could only arise from gonomeric-based autonomous behavior of maternal and paternal (mat/pat) genomes. The timely associated appearance with these latter divisions was fast growing small-cells (1/2 volume-size reduced from normal diploidy), which became homozygous from haploid, genomic doubling. Both reductive divisions thus produced genome altered progeny cells with GPA, which was associated with pre-cancer-like cell-phenotypic changes. Since both “undesirable” reductive divisions expressed orderly division sequences, their genetic controls were assumed to be “old genetics”, evolutionarily conserved in the genome of man. Support for this idea was a search for evidential material in the evolutionary record from primeval time, when haploid organisms were established. The theory was that endopolyploid and gonomery-based reductive divisions relieved the early eukaryotic organisms from accidental, non-proliferative diploidy and polyploidy, bringing the organism back to vegetative haploid proliferation. Asexual cycles were common for maintenance of propagating haploid and diploid early unicellular eukaryotes. Reduction of accidental diploidy was referred to as “one-step meiosis” which meant gonomeric-based maternal and paternal genomic independent segregations. This interpretation was supported by exceptional chromosomal behaviors. However, multiple divisions expressing non-disjunction was the choice-explanation from evolutionists, which today is also suggested for the rarer LL-1 near haploid leukemia. These preserved non-mitotic mechanistic divisions systems are today witnessed in apomixes and parthenogenesis in many animal phyla. Thus, the indications are the modern genome of man harbors, relic-genetics from past “good” evolvements assuring “stable” proliferation of ancient, primitive eukaryotes, but with cancer-like effects for normal human cells.

Egel, R. and Penny, D. (2008) On the Origin of Meiosis in Eukaryotes: Coevolution of Meiosis and Meiosis from Feeble Beginnings. Genome Dynamics and Stability, 3, 249-288.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/7050_2007_036

Enzien, M., McKhann, H.I. and Margulis, L. (1989) Ecology and Life History of an Amoebomastigote, Paratetramitus jugosus, from a Microbial Mat: New Evidence for Multiple Fission. Biological Bulletin, 177, 110-129. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1541839

Costello, D.P. (1970) Identical Linear Order of Chromosomes in both Gametes of the Acoel Tubularian Polychoerus carmelensis: A Preliminary Note. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 67, 1951-1958. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.67.4.1951

The origins of premature brain aging and chronic disease progression are associated with atherogenic diets and sedentary lifestyles in Western communities. Interests in brain aging that involves non alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the global stroke epidemic and neurodegeneration have become the focus of nutritional research. Atherogenic diets have been linked to plasma ceramide dysregulation and insulin resistance actively promoting chronic diseases and neurodegeneration in developed countries. Abnormal lipid signaling as observed in chronic diseases such as hypothyroidism, obesity and diabetes is connected to stroke and neurodegenerative diseases in man. Lipids that are involved in calcium and amyloid betahomeostasis are critical to cell membrane stability with the maintenance of nuclear receptors and transcriptional regulators that are involved in cell chromatin structure and DNA expression. Western diets high in fat induce hyperlipidemia, insulin resistance and other hormonal imbalances that are linked to alterations in brain calcium and lipid metabolism with susceptibility to various chronic diseases such as stroke. Nutrition and food science research identifies dietary components and lipids to prevent hyperlipidemia and calcium dyshomeostasis connected to neuroendocrine disease by maintaining astrocyte-neuron interactions and reversing hormonal imbalances that are closely associated with NAFLD, stroke and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in global populations.

Verdile, G., Fuller, S., Atwood, C.S., Laws, S.M., Gandy, S.E. and Martins, R.N. (2004) The Role of Beta Amyloid in Alzheimer’s Disease: Still a Cause of Everything or the Only One Who Got Caught? Pharmacology Research, 50, 397-409.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phrs.2003.12.028

Fadeel, B. and Xue, D. (2009) The Ins and Outs of Phospholipid Asymmetry in the Plasma Membrane: Roles in Health and Disease. Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 44, 264-277.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409230903193307

Parpura, V. and Haydon, P.G. (2000) Physiological Astrocytic Calcium Levels Stimulate Glutamate Release to Modulate Adjacent Neurons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97, 8629-8634.http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.97.15.8629

Kessels, H.W., Nabavi, S. and Malinow, R. (2013) Metabotropic NMDA Receptor Function Is Required for β-Amyloid-Induced Synaptic Depression. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110, 4033-4038.

Growing global needs for food call for substantial increases in protein production in coming years, and for diligent conservation efforts. Manures from farm animals have been viewed both as a re-source and as a waste product, but they are critically important sources of nutrients for organic and integrated farming and for traditional Asian aquaculture. Given constraints on livestock production and capture fisheries, careful development of the aquaculture industry is a necessity. The production volume and market share of tilapia are advancing extremely rapidly, and so too is the proliferation of misinformation and controversy. Culture and feeding practices differ widely, but feeding is usually recognized as the single largest cost to producers. Traditional Asian integrated farming practices involve the use of manures and other farm wastes to promote algae and zoo-plankton production, serving as a sole or supplemental nutrient source to the food chain that supports tilapia growout. Tilapia also ingest manures. The efficient use of nutrients from manures can have multiple benefits to integrated terrestrial agriculture and aquaculture, as long as product safety and quality are not compromised. With efficient use, handling of manures is simplified, fish production costs are reduced, fish nutrition can be improved, and potentially polluting materials are cycled constructively on integrated farms. Consumer and press reactions to the use of farm manures in food production can be highly polarized. Published responses cover a range of extremes, from enthusiastic endorsement to volatile reactions and outright rejection; in some areas this practice is considered to be more of a “PR (Public Relations) problem” than a health hazard. The perception in online public media that tilapia coming from ponds fertilized with manure are heavily contaminated with pathogens has not been supported by evidence. The perspectives of farmers in two major tilapia production areas (China and the Philippines) are included.

FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) (2012) The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture. 2012 FAO Fisheries Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.

Eshel, G., Shepon, A., Makov, T. and Milo, R. (2014) Land, Irrigation Water, Greenhouse Gas, and Reactive Nitrogen Burdens of Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Production in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 11996-12001.http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1402183111

Paxton, H. (2010) The Effects of Selective Breeding on the Architectural Properties of the Pelvic Limb in Broiler Chickens: A Comparative Study across Modern and Ancestral Populations. Journal of Anatomy, 217, 153-166.

Tendencia, E.A. and dela Peña, M. (2003) Investigation of Some Components of the Greenwater System Which Makes It Effective in the Initial Control of Luminous Bacteria. Aquaculture, 218, 115-119.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0044-8486(02)00524-0

This paper describes the experience of a PhD candidate during during her teaching training period within the Human nutrition course in a Brazilian public university. The experience provided the doctoral candidate the opportunity to study and deepen knowledge in the field of educational psychology, including learning theories, instructional theories and instructional design. As a result, the Human Nutrition Course was restructured and new learning material supported by Information and Communication Technologies was produced and used during the semester. As a result, it was reported by students a greater level of satisfaction and learning. The supervised practice in teaching was perceived as an important and useful moment by the doctoral candidate as it enabled interactions between research and teaching, the improvement of classes, media and learning strategies. It also enabled a greater comprehension of the professors’ role and its importance in the educational process. Finally, the paper discusses new ICT skills recommended in teaching in undergraduate health courses.

Literature describing dietary intakes of lactating mothers in the United States (US) is limited and none of the existing studies attempts to identify whether dietary shortcomings of lactating mothers are distinct from those of women of childbearing age in the US. The first objective of this observational study was to comprehensively analyze the dietary intakes of lactating mothers in the US to determine whether nutrient intakes from food were sufficient to meet recommendations. The second objective was to compare these intakes to those of women of childbearing age in the US. Weekly 3-day food records were collected from subjects for six weeks in 2012-2013. Subject mean daily intakes of food groups, macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, carotenoids, and specific fats including omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids were determined and compared to daily recommendations. Intakes were compared to US women using the 2009-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Fruit, vegetable, and dairy intakes of mothers were ≤50% of recommendations, resulting in 12 of 26 analyzed vitamins or minerals including potassium, iodine, chromium, choline, and vitamins A, D, and E having mean daily intakes below the Estimated Average Requirement. Vitamin D intake of subjects was 18% lower than US women, while most other nutrients showed intakes within 10% of each other between populations. Lactating women are not meeting the increased dietary needs associated with breastfeeding, supporting education initiatives and interventions specifically tailored to breastfeeding populations to increase intakes of vitamin D, vitamin E, iodine, biotin, carotenoids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids from food.

US Department of Agriculture ARS (2012) Total Nutrient Intakes: Percent Reporting and Mean Amounts of Selected Vitamins and Minerals from Food, by Family Income (as % of Federal Poverty Threshold) and Age. US Department of Agriculture ARS, Beltsville.

Bougma, K., Aboud, F.E., Harding, K.B. and Marquis, G.S. (2013) Iodine and Mental Development of Children 5 Years Old and Under: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Nutrients, 5, 1384-1416.http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu5041384

Murphy, M.M., Barraj, L.M., Herman, D., Bi, X., Cheatham, R. and Randolph, R.K. (2012) Phytonutrient Intake by Adults in the United States in Relation to Fruit and Vegetable Consumption. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 112, 222-229.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2011.08.044